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Published: September 2nd 2016
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Day 5 - August 28, 2016 – Santarem, Portugal to Golega, Portugal – 25..01 Miles We left the hotel this morning before the sun was up and even before breakfast, so the night clerk had a sack breakfast (ham/cheese sandwich, apple and yogurt) ready for us to take to eat later on the trail. After leaving the hotel we walked back up the hill and headed towards the train station (Ribeira de Santarem) where we dropped off Karen so she could catch the train to Golega.
We leave the train station on an asphalt paving walking to a medieval bridge where we turn right over Rio Alcorce onto a quiet country road. Once we have reached the farmhouse, we make a turn onto a farm track that takes us through crop fields running alongside the road we just left.
As we are walking the road takes us past fields of corn where I finally decide it would be fun to come walking out of the corn like the players did in the movie “Field of Dreams”. Continuing on we pass by some grapes which we decide we must taste to be sure they are
going to make some really good wine which after tasting them I think they will. It’s not long before we come across a field of melons and I tried to convince Harlan to pick one and put it in his backpack so we could have it later on in the day but of course he said “no” as he said his backpack was already full and of course my backpack already weighed too much.
We now come to the small village of Vale de Figueira where we stop at a little café for some coffee and eat our sack breakfast. Upon leaving the village the trail takes us through a cork tree plantation. We then cross over a bridge and now alternate between country lanes and farm tracks through mostly corn fields along with a few sunflower fields, pepper fields and fig trees.
Upon reaching the little village of Pombalinho we see the sign that shows the markings for the various years when the area flooded. Continuing on we come to Azinhaga where I have my picture taken with the statute of Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago, who was the first Portuguese writer to win
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998 and who’s works have been published in over 30 languages. After having our pictures take, we stop at the little café there and have a cold soda to help cool us off.
Upon leaving Azinhaga we decide to take the alternate route to Golega that is a mile longer but gets us off the very busy highway. The route does takes us past a field where horses, sheep and cattle were grazing and another field of tomatoes before reaching the outskirts of Golega.
We finally reached our accommodations for the night which was the Guest House Lusitanus which is located inside the equestrian center. FYI – Golega is known as the horse country and they have a big horse event in October each year.
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